


This isn't the beginning of a joke, this is the beginning of a love song...

by Cicuta_virosa



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alive Renfri | Shrike (The Witcher), Creature Jaskier | Dandelion, Everybody Lives, Everybody lives even those who were already dead, F/F, Fix-It, Fluff, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Healing, M/M, Male Lactation, Mpreg, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23989564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cicuta_virosa/pseuds/Cicuta_virosa
Summary: Jaskier sings Renfri and Yennefer to life and doesn't think enough about the effect it could have on two powerful women. And the effect it could have on him.After all; he's the first music note ever heard, not a fertility god.And everybody knows Witchers are made, not born.Honestly, this fic will be pure fluff, fix-it and smut and Vesemir will have so, so many grandchildren.
Relationships: Aiden & Lambert (The Witcher), Eskel/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Lambert, Renfri | Shrike/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 47
Kudos: 266





	1. Chapter 1

Witchers are made, not born.

Witchers are _supposed_ to be made, not born.

Nevertheless Jaskier never really did care for rules. He didn’t thousands of years ago, the first time a creature took a stick and another stick and produced a rhythm, the very first one. It was not an Elf, not yet, it was before, and the men weren’t even an idea in the Gods’s minds.

But that creature heard the rhythm and found it good and somewhere a spark was born, and long long after, that spark would call itself Jaskier.

Jaskier had never cared for rules.

Witchers walk the Path alone….

Pffff, yeah, now, The White Wolf has his personal bard.

Renfri didn’t survive her last encounter with Geralt….

A note here, a song there, and Jaskier twists the young woman alive.

Yennefer burns herself from her Chaos in Sodden, and yes, this one is more difficult and Jaskier plays the lute and sings, sings, SINGS like he hadn’t in hundreds of years. He sings of a powerful sorceress who protected the kingdoms, he sings of her magic, he sings of her courage, he sings of her thirst of more power, he sings of her courage and her strength, he sings, sings, sings, and when he’s finished, Yennefer opens her violet eyes on a burnt battlefield.

Jaskier has never sung so much magic, too much perhaps, he searches for a moss covered tree stump to rest his head and feel asleep. He wakes up prisoner of a dark mage, clad in iron, and yes, for a moment, he fears it will go very very badly for him then the door is torn out by a feral Geralt.

Turn out what the sorceress and the Witcher needed to go from angry ex-lovers to hesitant friends was a quest in search for a note of music made man, made bard, in need of rescuing.

All of this started like that.

A formerly dead princess, a formerly burnt out sorceress, a not human bard and a Witcher.

It seems like a beginning of a joke… Four people playing human walk into a bar….

It seems like a beginning of a joke and this is not. This is the beginning of a love song.

In Kaer Morhen, far away from all people who could try to hurt Ciri as she learns, Jaskier and Yennefer as they heal, Renfri as she rests, the Witchers care for their guests, learn them, tame them….

Love them.

Witchers share everything after all and Jaskier has seen people loving each other in every configuration possible, as civilizations rose and fell, and doesn’t see the problems in going to bed with Geralt and his brothers.

And one day, Jaskier sings. He sings for Yenner, Yennefer who loves so deep and who pretends she doesn’t. He sings for the woman he loves like a sister, he sings for what she lost and what she wishes for, her head on his knees and what will never happen, they think.

Even Jaskier can’t change the barren nature of sorceress, can’t give Yennefer her fertility back. He’s the first note ever played, not a fertility god, and this isn’t ever starting on the fact that Renfri lacks the necessary equipment to impregnate Yennefer.

Jaskier sings and he doesn’t think of the consequences of singing for a woman he literally sang back from annihilation, doesn’t think how Renfri too, he sang back to life. He doesn’t think how powerful Yennefer is, how Renfri herself was never quite a baseline human.

When Yennefer’s waist start to thicken, only then, Jaskier thinks about mixing magic and music and the effects of war drums and how music has always participated in rituals. He doesn’t ask how exactly it worked for Renfri to give that child to Yennefer, he likes his balls where they are.

Since he can be a bit of an idiot, he doesn’t realize for himself before another month is gone and even Geralt, not the most observant of Witcher, who needed Yennefer to told him Jaskier wasn’t human, has realized, before admitting he sang himself into quite a fertile position too.

Witcher are made, not born.

In theory.

But in one stormy night, the three younger Wolves open the door of their bedchamber and let Vesemir, Ciri and Renfri enter. Yennefer is washing her hands, tired but happy. Her own child was born a week ago and it was good she was mobile again as Jaskier entered labour, because honestly, the three fathers were useless.

Geralt put a child into Vesemir’s arms and another into Ciri. Vesermir leans down to see better, and the twin have golden eyes and white hair.

Witchers are made, not born.

And the world is changing.


	2. Chapter 2

“How did you meet Renfri?” Ciri asks one morning, as Jaskier and her watch Renfri trains with the Wolf Witchers. Yennefer is doing whatever mages does in their laboratory and the twins are sleeping in a bassinet next to Jaskier, who is nursing Yennefer’s daughter. Baby have no place in laboratories and Jaskier have enough milk to nurse his own two sons and his friends’ daughter, and still have left for the night, when the three Witchers like to drink from him between athletic rounds of sex.

Eskel, especially, loves nothing more than to drink from Jaskier, nursing the milk, proof of the sons the young bard gave them. Those were nice, peaceful moments, sweat dying on their skins, Geralt lazily rutting against Jaskier’s ass and kissing his neck, waiting for Eskel to be finished before having Jaskier again, and Lambert admiring….

Just at that moment, Renfri puts Lambert on his ass. She was already dangerous before Vesemir started to give her special lessons and now she’s one of the first human quick enough to sometimes disarm a Witcher in loyal combat.

Jaskier smiles at Lambert’s colourful words, and he starts narrating:

_The first song is for Renfri…. That would be a good title, but of course it isn’t true. Jaskier is as old as music. Or almost, since at the beginning, he didn’t have enough power to take form, to be really sentient._

_But he’s old as fuck and he has sung people back to life before. Children, mostly, he always had a soft spot for the little ones, gone before their first song. He even has sung back princess to life before._

_So when, three years after their first meeting, Geralt one day unclench enough to tell Jaskier the truth about Blaviken, Jaskier doesn’t hesitate. He is not even in love with Geralt yet, not like he will be later, and they are not sleeping together yet. Ten days after the evening of confession, they go their separate ways and Jaskier goes to Blaviken. He doesn’t do it for Geralt. He does it because he hates songs with a weak endings and because Stregobor seems like a prick._

_In Blaviken, Jaskier sit in the town square and starts to sing. He can feel Stregobor in his tower but what can only one mage do against music itself? Especially since Jaskier has no intention to exhaust himself in doing all the hard work. Jaskier sings, sings, sings, the music of the lute reinforcing the notes. He sings of a beautiful princess, born under a Black Sun, and threatened by an evil mage. He sings of Renfri and Geralt desperate fight and people, eyes glazed over, assemble and listen._

_Jaskier pushes harder, sings higher. He sings how the people of Blaviken saw the Witcher and Renfri fight and how they pleaded him for her life. He sings of Geralt’s mercy and how the town throw Stregobor out with the help of the Witcher and cared for the hurt Princess in the tower, sleeping off her wounds in an enchanted sleep… He sings and he sings and he sings, waving the notes until the people are believing it happened this way, until they believe they had been good, all those years ago, and protected a hunted young woman despite her reputation… He draws power from every people, from their belief that they were good people, like their fathers certainly had been and wouldn’t make horrible choices._

_It was always easier to push the songs this way. To use the beliefs of people._

_Jaskier sings and sings and sings and the sun turns and the night comes and still people stay and Jaskier sings._

_When the first ray of the sun touches the lute, people leave, one by one._

_When the last one has left the town square, asking themselves why they had come here, Jaskier sings the last note and fall silent. He’s panting and covered in sweat, but quite happy with himself. In the silence, he hears the door of the tower opens and the steps leaving out._

_“Hello, Renfri of the Black Sun,” he smiles._


	3. Chapter 3

That night, when Renfri opens the door of their rooms, she finds only Yennefer, and no baby.

Yennefer is only wearing something whose name Renfri, half feral, spent half of her life in the woods, doesn’t know the name of, but which is made of lace and enhances more than it cover.

Since Renfri prides herself of being less emotionally dumb than dear Geralt, she doesn’t need more explanations.

Still, she asks: “The baby?”

“With Jaskier and his wolves.”

Renfri divests herself of a few knives. If there is a safe place in the world, it’s with Jaskier and his power, with the Witchers and their strength. Still, she doesn’t exactly liked it.

She had nothing, nothing, and now, this strange family, born from Jaskier’s music.

Jaskier who saved her, who send her to Cintra, who played the partition of the world with such talent to minimize the death and the horror.

Jaskier who saved Yennefer, who sang her back to health, who sang of their love with such conviction than it bore fruits….Jaskier, who almost died from Stregobor’s greed.

“Stop thinking,” Yennefer orders and Renfri feels herself shiver at her voice. She smirks. Compliance never was her forte.

“Makes me.”

Yennefer comes to Renfri, helps her with the armour Vesemir gifted her and bites her mouth in a long kiss, pressing the long line of her body against Renfri’s.

Renfri had nothing and now she has her love, and their child, and three dumb wolf-brothers and a wolf-father, and a few Witchers of other obedience for cousins, and a strange music god, insisting he’s the First Note, not a god, and as she let Yennefer bare her to the warmth of their room, the warmest in the keep thanks to Yenner’s magic, she feels herself grateful for fate.

Her trials were long, arduous, even killed her.

But for this happiness, no matters strange and mismatched, Renfri would kill a hundred times more people than she had to survive before, endure a thousand more almost death.

When she kisses Yennefer, it’s deep, hungry. She pushes her lover on the bed, already attacking the lace.

“Greedy,” Yennefer remarks, with pride in her voice. She always loves to bask in Renfri’s desire.

“For you, always.” Renfri admits, taking a nipple between her lips.

“What are you in the mood for, tonight?” She asks a moment later as she is tracing invisible patterns from her tongue around her lover’s navel. Yennefer’s mood in bed can switch from an extreme to the other and Renfri, after one or two very false starts between them, has taken to the habits of always asking, no matters how well she reads the mage’s mood.

“I want another baby”, Yennefer says and Renfri’s mind crashes, starts again. After a moment, she finds her words again.

“We’re not even sure how I impregnated you the first time.”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a ‘I’ll always give you everything, but I’m not sure of _how_.”

Yennfer’s grip on her neck became harder, and she pushed firmly Renfri lower.

“Leave that to the songs and the magic. Love me, love me, Renfri of the Black Sun, and give me everything.”

“That, I’ll always do,” Renfri whispers and she puts a playful, teasing kiss on the curls of Yennefer’ sex, before going to work. She knows Yennefer: after a first orgasm, the other woman will be much more malleable to the long, teasing night Renfri thinks more suited to conceiving a child.

****************

Across the keep, Eskel and Geralt are sleeping in front of the fire, in pile. Yennefer’s little girl is already sleeping in her bassinet and one of the twin is peacefully slumbering in Lambert’s arms, as Jaskier finishes nursing the other one. Suddenly, the bard giggles and songs a few notes, covering the head of his child in kisses.

“Did he try to smile again?” Lambert asks.

“Not yet,” Jaskiers says, “but…” he giggles again, and adds: “The melody of Kaer Morhen is changing. I thought it would need more time and so much more power.”

And he refuses to explain, despite Lambert’s bafflement. That night, once all the children are sleeping, Jaskier is insatiable, urging his wolves to fuck him till dawn. And if he leaves them after, sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted, and disappear into unknown parts of the keep, nobody alive is awake to see him.


	4. Chapter 4

When Jaskier wakes up, a Witcher is missing in the enormous bed which his lovers carved as a gift, an enormous love nest where they conceived their twins and love each other as often as possible.

Eskel and Geralt are still sleeping, exhausted. The birth of the three babies, their twin and Yennefer and Renfri little one, gave them the desire to finally make the keep a place to raise a family, not only a surviving ruin, only kept good enough to survive another year. They have been working hard, every day, from dawn to dusk, and loving Jaskier as hard as usual, and their sleep seem sometimes more coma than anything else…and Lambert has the exact same rhythm, so he should be sleeping too.

Jaskier silently leaves the bed and it’s a mark of the other Witcher deep sleep that they don’t open their eyes. Jaskier checks the twin. The little angels are sleeping peacefully in their crib. Jaskier puts a small kiss on each little head. In his long, long life, he was never interested by fathering, or well, mothering he supposes, children. He knows now it was because he was waiting for the perfect other parents for his children. He has sincerely loved every of his long list of lovers, even the one-night ones, but he can’t imagine having children with any of them, not even the ones he stayed years with.

In silence, he opens the door of their rooms and goes in search of his missing loved one. He finds Lambert on one of the ramparts. The moon is high, and enormous, and he can see almost as well as in the sun. The Witcher is sitting on an abandoned stone, watching the landscape. If it was Geralt, Jaskier would use the term brooding, but this isn’t Lambert’s style. This one of his beloved is more used to exploding immediately, not sitting, silent and immobile as a stone.

Jaskier sits next to him, snuggling against his warmth and waits.

After a moment, Lambert admits.

“I dreamt of Aiden.”

Jaskier stays silent, but he presses his hand in a sign of support.

“I don’t like dreaming of dead people when I’m in bed with you and my brothers,” Lambert continues.

“He was a Witcher?” Jaskier asks, even if he’s pretty sure of the answer. As a rule, Witchers try to not befriend humans, because human died too soon and Witcher-we-don’t-have-feelings get heartbroken.

“Of the School of the Cat. Crazy fuckers, all of them. The mutagens are different.”

“Tell me about him”, Jaskier says and Lambert does. He speaks of his friend, of their shared travels, of how easily Aiden shared his coins and his laughs. He also talks about his darker parts, how Cats get blood-crazy, how they lost themselves in the kills, how unpredictable they can be.

He tells him Aiden was his friend, in a way brothers can’t be. Fate gave Eskel and Geralt to Lambert, older brothers who will be there for him till the end, till the death, but how Aiden was a choice he made, the friend he choose, as crazy as Aiden was.

Then he tells Jaskier what he learnt of Aiden’s death and how sometimes he dreams of the scene he didn’t see. How sometimes in his darkest dream, Lambert is the one killing him.

Jaskier caresses his hand slowly, offering his hear and his heart to unload Lambert’s pain. Then he takes him to the hot spring under the fortress, bathes him with care and tenderness, slowly massaging his head, his shoulders, his neck, with perfumed oils. He washes every part of Lambert, every scar, every crevices, he kisses his feet, his back, his hands, washing him in love at the same time that he washes him in soap and warm water. Then he guides him to the low booth seat of stone covered in furs and pillows, which he installed himself. Things become quickly more heated and Jaskier sucks him, taking all the time in the world. He takes great care of sucking his balls, something that makes Lambert always shivers, caresses his thighs with his hands, comes back to the slit, plays with him, using all he knows of Lambert’s preferences. He doesn’t tease, just give pleasure and Lambert, a miracle in itself, let himself be loved. When he comes, Jaskier let the sperm covers his face, something that always please the Wolves. Lambert licks it, purring in a way more feline than canine, fondling Jaskier’s cock at the same time.

They feel asleep there, Lambert’s body covering Jaskier, safe and loved.

The next day, Jaskier trails Lambert all day, questioning him about Aiden. As if a barrage had failed, Lambert’s words stumble out in a way they rarely do. At lunch, Jaskier interrogates the other Witchers about the Cat. The other weren’t close as Lambert, but they all have a nice word to say.

This time, no one of them has any suspicion. Later, on other cases, they will, but it’s the first time, in a way. No one was there for Renfri and later for Yennefer, they didn’t see. They think Jaskier will simply unleash another of his Friend of humanity song on the world come spring, a song about a Cat, crazy and noble at the same time….Lambert is already ready to hear it, even if it will break and heal his heart at the same time, not like Toss a coin, which years after he heard it for the first time, still makes him want to laugh at Geralt until he’s wheezing.

At dusk, Jaskier sits down on the stone on the south rampart, where he heard the name Aiden for the first time. Dusk is a good moment for magic, and a good moment for Cats.

He starts singing. It’s much harder without the villagers of Blaviken to help, even unknowingly, but it’s easier than for Yennefer, who had done the Gods only know what to herself at Sodden.

Jaskier sings. He starts with Lambert, because it’s easier to start the melody with a rhythm he knows so well. He sings his courage and his flaming eyes, his swords and his tenacity, his sarcasm and his hidden heart. Little by little, another melody creeps in, notes interwined. Jaskier sings of friendship, of Cats and Wolves, different except in all the ways that count, identical except in all the ways that count, he sings of friendship and courage and laugh a little unhinged, because for Cats, such is the prize of protecting humanity of monsters who bumps in the night.

He sings of Aiden, telling his name to the keep, to the wind, to the gods, he sings and he sings and he sings, until sweat is a river across his back, until blood is on his fingertips, until all Witchers and human and sorceress in the keep are sitting on hay below the rampart and listening. Geralt wants to go to him but Yennefer stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

Jaskier sings and sings and sings and it’s harder than he thought it would be, Aiden too far away from him, but at the last note, at dawn, Jaskier lets go his lute and the two of them tumble from the ramparts.

Geralt catches the bard and Eskel catches the lute and Lambert is still swearing when someone hammers on the great door of the keep. They all watch each other. The last days have been nice for the season but the path wandering to them is still taken by snow, nobody should be there.

It’s Lambert who opens the door, his silver sword in his hands. No human could have come.

“What the fuck have you fuckers done?” Aidan asks, naked as the day he was born, hands on hips and feet in the snow. 


	5. Chapter 5

“That was unwise, my lark”, is the very first thing Jaskier hear when he wakes up.

Someone has taken him out of his clothes, he’s naked in their bed, under a pile of furs, and Geralt is a long, strong, line of warmth and muscle behind him.

“Thank you for bringing back a Witcher cousin from death,” Jaskier snarks, sleep still heavy in his voice. Geralt mouths his neck, bites gently and repeats:

“This was unwise. You could have pushed too much. You passed out.”

“Prudence recommendation. From a monster hunter…The things I hear, sweet Melitelte,” Jaskier yawns. He doesn’t have the energy to roll over to look at Geralt. The other may have a point, it was much more difficult than he believed it would be, perhaps because he sang the Cat back to life here, and not in the place he died, or in the place where once the Cat’s Keep was.

Geralt’s teeth find his neck again and Jaskier sighs in pleasure. His Wolves like to bite so much that it gave him a reflex. When teeth come out, his libido rise. The Witcher licks the trace he just left, little licks of tongue which don’t do anything to help Jaskier’s blood calm.

“I thought we had lost you, for a second.”

“Geralt-“

“Shhh, lark.”

The teeth, again. Sleep definitely has deserted Jaskier. Geralt’s arms are around him, his hands emprisonn Jaskier’s own.

“For a moment, I thought we would have to tell the twins about their dead father.”

“No, no, my love. I won’t abandon you. Never.”

Geralt bites again, harder, and Jaskier whines. They have started to move, slowly, a long grind, Geralt’s dick hard against his ass.

“Should we keep you in bed all day long, to be sure you don’t find troubles? Should we keep you open and dripping all day, to be sure you don’t run into more than you can chew, my little note?”

“The oil, love, stop teasing.”

“Shhhhh, I heard you.”

A finger, oiled, and thick and callused and Jaskier whines again. Under the furs, it’s a world in itself. They are alone in the whole galaxy right now. Jaskier tries to turn again but Geralt keeps him in place, his teeth in his neck, and Jaskier shivers for it, goes limp.

“Fuck,” he whispers, and Geralt chuckles and starts again:

“Perhaps we should put another litter in your belly. Pups, strong and healthy, to keep you breed well and good.”

“Not a livestock being, thank you.”

“No, not that. Our mate, so good, so strong. Perfect and so good for us.”

And perhaps Jaskier has a bit of a praise kink, but who wouldn’t, when Geralt, Geralt!, speaks like that in his ear, slow and sure and his voice like a low melody, old and powerful. It sends back Jaskier to the first time of his existence. He curses at the second finger but doesn’t try to turn again, letting his lover play him like a beloved instrument.

“You are so beautiful when you’re round from our pups,” Geralt continues, “You’re always beautiful, vibrant, but like that…Full of life, when we’re only supposed to bring death.”

“You were never what they said you were,” Jaskier tries to protest, but it’s a little jumbled, because a third finger is joining the first two. Around them, the bard opens beautifully. It’s much easier than it was in the beginning, and this is not surprising, because no days pass without several of his wolves taking him.

“When I understood our seed had taken root in you….”, Geralt says and he makes something clever with his fingers that makes Jaskier arches against him with a non-human noise, a noise which seems more of a bitch in heat than a clever bard.

“More, fills me” he asks, begs, but he doesn’t move, just let Geralt do as he wants with his body. The Witcher rolls him over his belly, helps him put his knees under him, pushes his head against the linen. Jaskier lets himself be manhandled, presents like Geralt seems to want, ass in the air, dripping his oil, back bowed submissively. Geralt mounts him, stretching him, growling deep in his chest, and it’s good, so good. Jaskier is at the same time turned on like he didn’t think it was possible to be and exhausted by singing back a Witcher to life. It’s a pretty interesting combination. Geralt moves in him and it’s hard and good. Jaskier closes his eyes, let pleasure washes over him, the sheet under him, the hard cock stuffing him, the powerful thrusts, relentless, using Jaskier hard. The bard squirms, silently asking for more, and only obtains two sharps swats on his ass. His back arches and he moans and Geralt falters for a second before picking up the rhythm again.

“We’re talking about that later,” he says and Jaskier can already see himself, naked and faced down on one of his wolf’s knees, his behind red and pleasantly sore. The image dissolves as Geralt fucks him harder, whispering dirty things about Jaskier’s hole, about his body, about the pups Geralt wants to put in him. How they should keep him naked and dripping, about his belly swollen and his chest full of milk and how pretty Jaskier was, always.

When Jaskier comes with a whimper, he turns a little and sees Eskel and Lambert, standing at the door, admiring the spectacle of their brother mounting their lover. Jaskier reaches a hand and they obeys the unvoiced demand and come closer. When Geralt’ seed is running on Jaskier’s puffy hole, Eskel takes his place, covers Jaskier with his bulk, takes him hard, until Jaskier eyes cross and he’s nothing more than pleasure. He doesn’t have the strength to keep his ass in position when it’s Lambert’s turn, so they stuff a pillow under his hips and Lambert is mounting him too.

For hours, they ruin him with mind-blowing pleasure. A human body wouldn’t resist the amorous assault, but Jaskier was never human and there is only pleasure, his mind blank of everything but the music of their love making, as they take turn and take him, again and again. Soon, his ass isn’t enough and he opens his mouth too, taken from both sides, adored and conquered in the same time. The sheet will definitely need to be burnt. The Witchers, for all their superhuman stamina, are panting and exhausted when all his done, Jaskier no more than a pile of purring bard, muscles lose, his belly sloshing from all their seed he received and licked and took in him. Eskel finds a little last spark of energy and makes a nest of clean linen on the floor, next to the fire and they sleep it off, in a pile of dirty limbs and soft snores. Even in his sleep, Jaskier can hear the music starting, a little sweet tune, new and fresh, and he smiles in his dream. He won’t be as blind the second time.

This time, Jaskier knows, from the beginning, that their love will bear fruits. 


	6. Chapter 6

Apparently, Aiden has been dead for ten years.

Even for a Witcher, it’s a big thing to bite but Aiden can delay explosives emotions about it for later. He’s wearing Lambert’s clothes, a warm fur on his legs, a fire crackling, and a belly full of venison and White Gull in his hand.

When the latest moment he remembers before waking up, naked in the snow, in front of the Wolves’ Keep, was of debilating pain and the knowledge he would die, it’s certainly an improvement.

Even if what Lambert is telling him, about a Note of music, “ _not any note, Aiden, the first one_ ,” becoming bard, or god, Aiden isn’t totally sure about it, and starting some sort of Witcher’s orgy with Lambert and his two older brothers makes no fucking sense.

“And I thought the Cats were supposed to be the crazy one,” he grumbles, taking another sip. Lambert still doesn’t explode in a harsh laugh, and instead insists everything is true, talking about a dead princess and a perhaps dead sorceress and their little girl…

Aiden stops him. His friend isn’t in the habit to prattle on and on like that, and if somebody is drugging Lambert with hallucinogens, well, now, Aiden is there to help.

“Am I supposed to sleep with the music God? Because I’m not ungrateful, but I’m more of a ladies man.”

Lambert is already growling, so that’s a big no.

Aiden takes another sip.

And they said the Cats were the crazy ones.

Later, he wanders around. He had come once before his death, but only once, and it hadn’t been for wintering, just Lambert taking him to a safe place to heal, when Aiden had broken his two legs at the same time, saving Lambert’s life on a hunt.

The place is still marked by the attack which had killed all the trainees and almost all the Wolves, but he can see, here and here, the traces of recent work. They are not anymore only stopping the roof of collapsing on their heads, they’re repairing the Keep, not like it was before, but like it could be. A safe place, warded, guarded, with cellars deep enough for provisions, and greenhouses, and everything that can makes it easier to raise children in this world.

A safe place, for Cirilla, for the baby girl of the sorceress, for the twins Jaskier gave his Witchers.

“Melitelte’s tits”, Aiden whispers.

The Wolves are healing, bits by bits.

The Cat finds the strange bard, he’s still not convinced about the note part, in the stable, in a pile of hay. He’s singing, no, composing, stopping there and there, going back to the same phrase, starting again with a slight variation, and he smiles pleasantly at Aiden in welcome.

Aiden sits on the hay, eyeing Jaskier with suspicion. The bard’s smile ramps up.

“Still not convinced,” the Witcher finally says, and Jaskier shrugs.

“I have time,” he simply answers, “and you were a gift for Lambert. Don’t take it the wrong way, kittie, but I don’t resurrect strangers like that usually. ”

He continues on his instrument, letting Aiden thinks.

“And still, you did Renfri?” The cat remarks.

“Yeah, because Stregobor was a prick.”

“Who?”

“Not important anymore, he’s dead.”

“Not only in the resurrection business, aren’t we?”

“No, that one was Geralt and Yennefer.”

Aiden raises an eyebrow, as a silent question, and Jaskier shrugs again but doesn’t say more. Aiden can see him nervously touching his neck, again and again, and he doesn’t press for more. He can ask Lambert later, and he isn’t a jerk. Well, not a total one. This gesture, he had seen it before, on former slaves most of the time, rubbing away the pain of an absent collar.

Aiden won’t pretend he’s the most tactful Witcher ever, but people who resurrect him can have a pass at the curiosity, especially since Lambert never learnt how to keep something from Aiden.

Aiden rolls over in the hay, his mind reeling. He’s a fucking Witcher, he has seen monsters people can’t even imagine, and would wet their braies if they tried to, he has seen horrors and wonders, and magic and simple human evil, and still, he hadn’t imagined something like that could come without a price.

He feels Jaskier laughs more than he hears him.

“You really are a cat, aren’t you?” the young man says, “I mean, the Wolves, they are all puppies, they can growl but they trust so easily, at the end.”

“Probably because you open your legs so fast!” Aiden growls, and in retaliation, the other pinches him.

Any other man, Aiden would break his nose for that, and for a second, he’s tempted too. Lambert forgave him even worse, once, as Aiden was taken up by the Cat School frenzy, he had almost killed his Wolf.

He takes careful breathes to control himself. He’s a guest in the Keep, and Jaskier is the father of Lambert’s pups. The…mother? The other parent.

He closes his eyes, tries to concentrate himself on the music. Later, he will need to speak to Jaskier, or to tell Lambert to speak to Jaskier. He didn’t receive the same mutagens as the Wolves, no matters how he tries to play nice, he’s always half a second away from violence. He has nothing to do in this healing place, with young, breakable children.

Fuck, he can’t stay too long…The moment the passes are clear, he’s out.

Aiden’s so busy worrying himself, he doesn’t really listen to the music. Slowly, slowly, the lullabies take him, slow him down, and before he knows it, he’s snoring in the hay.

Jaskier doesn’t stop, continues to play for the Cat. All around him, he can feel the music of Kaer Mohren, the pain of generations of sacrificed young boys, the desperate last stands of the Witchers during the attack, and also, like a new rhythm mingling with the sad notes.

It will need a lot of work for the new song to be more powerful, and the old ones will never really disappear, it would be an insult to the dead, but Jaskier has been playing songs for a long, long time, even before humanity came to the Continent, when the elves were the only ones.

He eyes the sleeping Cat. He still has a few weeks to help him realize healing can be for him too. With a smile, Jaskier goes back to composing.

They are still wrongs to right in this Keep, and he has no intention to stop.


	7. Chapter 7

The thing to understand about Kaer Mohren is that it’s a tragedy and it had always been one. Long before the pogrom, when they came and killed everybody, the trainee, the children, the Witchers who were there healing, the teachers….

It had always been a tragedy because in this place, Witchers took young boys and feed them poisons until the boys died or mutated, reproducing what had been done to themselves when they still had been young themselves. The victims becoming the guilty, generations after generations, all in the name of a humanity who spat on them and had finally come and killed them.

Sure, it’s a memorable song, but a horrible one, in Jaskier’s professional opinion.

He can hear it. In the wind, in the stone, in the earth. Hundreds of young voices yelling in pain and ending in a wet noise. He can hear the pain and the terrible injustice of it.

If Jaskier was a different being, it would make him want to kill something, someone.

But he’s the first note, violence, if he sometimes partakes in it, will never be his first answer. He listens because it’s the first thing to do to change a song. Understand it.

He speaks, days after days, with the Witchers. He never really interrogates them, no, he just listens, and sometimes the conversation goes back to before the massacre. It’s rare for them to speak of before, even now that the Keep is slowly fulling itself of joy.

He listens and he hesitates. He learns so much. He learns the name of the boys who died during training with Eskel and Geralt. He learns how they died, poison, accident, a training accident, even one of food poisoning. He learns the name of the children who died during the sack. He learns the names of the Witchers who were young at the same time as Vesemir and didn’t come back from their first year on the Path. He learns the name of the friendly Griffin who was visiting and died defending the youngest Wolf-to-be during the Siege. He learns the name of teachers and friends and Witchers and young and old and all their deaths. He learns of the boys of Lambert’s years, who all died, leaving Lambert alone of his cohort.

There are so many songs he would have to sing to right even a tenth of the wrongs which happened there. And some of them would siphon all his own life, he has his limits, and some of them would be dangerous for the equilibrium of his Wolves.

Some of the Wolf Witchers who died during the Siege seem like prick, in Jaskier’s opinion, even if his lovers wouldn’t say it like that. Because for them, it seemed normal to talk about the teachers who beat them, or the horrors of the Trials….

Lambert is the only one who seems to perceive it’s not normal to force feed poison to children. Jaskier is trying very hard to think Eskel and Geralt wouldn’t have helped make new Witchers, if the siege hadn’t happened, but he wouldn’t bet his life on it.

The Path had to be walked.

But his beloved will live long, Jaskier will makes sure of it, and they have time to understand. In the valleys, in the whole continent, even if he hadn’t left the Keep in three years, he can still feel his songs about Witchers working their magic. His beloved will come back easier, if they are pay like they should, if they fight with their belly full and their armours always patched with the best care money can buy.

Jaskier listens and Jaskier composes and Jaskier hesitates. It’s probably the last time the Wolves and the other inhabitants of the Keep don’t understand. They don’t understand, really, how outside he is of the rules of magic which governs Yennefer’s power, for example. Renfri, Yennefer, Aiden, they continue to think they are the exceptions, not the rule Jaskier could make it.

So Jaskier hesitates, because a part of him thinks his lovers will look at him differently, and composes, and sings and plays music, but doesn’t Sing.

Aiden and Lambert go to the Path for a few months, and come back with new stories to tell to Jaskier, and Eskel and Geralt go to the Path and come back, and it’s a good thing Eskel is better at stories because Geralt is as terrible about it than ever.

And Jaskier goes rounder and rounder with his second pregnancy. It’s only one this time, he’s sure of it, and he already loves him or her so fucking much. And still, he doesn’t Sing.

And one day, when the sun is high in the sky, when the air is full of the scent of summer, Jaskier feels the child move in him for the first time.

Now. It has to be _now_. Giddy with joy and power, Jaskier takes his lute and runs, as much as he can with his gravitation centre already shifting, to the kitchen. He plops himself in front of the hearth. Aiden is there, wood carving like he does in idle times, and looks up in surprise.

“You’ll have to do,” Jaskier says, because Eskel and Lambert are on the Path, and Vesemir and Geralt are working on one of the towers, and he doesn’t know where the ladies are, and it has to be **_now_**.

Jaskier is according his lute as quick as he can, and he orders.

“A fire, as big, as intense as you can, quick. Like you were trying to save a hypothermic child.”

“We’re in summer! Even Vesemir has accepted to not cover himself so much!”

“Like it was the most horrible blizzard and the most horrible autumn, like winter had come too quick, blocking the Killer to the Keep. And an enormous amount of covers in front of the fire.”

Aiden hesitates, clearly thinking Jaskier has gone bonkers, and the bard grimaces, because it’s now or never, and if the moment passes, there will be other moment for other Songs, but this one can only be sung now.

So, he opens his mouth and he starts Singing, and he prays Aiden obeys.

He Sings. He Sings and he Plays, and he tells the world about a young boy who was a Child Surprise. He sings about the Witcher who came for him and who took him, up, up, up, to the Wolfs’ Keep. He Sings about the blizzard which took them, much too earlier than usual. He Sings about the wind and the cold and the snow. He Sings of too late, as the child moves in him, and sweat is a river between his shoulder blades. The fire crackles and Jaskier can almost see it, despite the season, the snow, and the child buddled up against the Witcher.

He Sings how it was too late. How the Witcher puts the child in front of the fire in the kitchen when they arrived, but the lungs were already taken by the illness. He thinks of another young boy, the one who had arrived just a month before, who had been put in charge of giving water and broth to the ill child.

He Sings of Lambert, angry, hurt, worried, caring like he could for that other boy, and how it was the first time his lover saw death. Lambert had been in the Keep for twenty days, when he saw a boy dying, when he understood.

Here, in front of that fire, a boy who could have been a Witcher died, but Jaskier doesn’t Sing that. He Sings of Lambert’s dedication, of his refusal of the injustice of it. He Sings of Lambert caring, caring, caring, caring for that child when he himself wasn’t so much older.

Sixty years after, Lambert still hasn’t forgiven Vesemir for taking him to Kaer Morhen, still hasn’t forgiven the other Witcher for taking that child up the Killer, despite the snow.

Jaskier Sings and Sings and Sings, and the child in his belly seems to dance in joy.

He can perceive Aiden, at the edge of his perception, but everything else is gone, just the Song and the child in him, and the dead child who never had a chance.

And happens what should have happened sixty years ago, in Jaskier’s opinion. The mountains of covers and furs Aiden had put in front of the roaring fire shifts and a sleepy head emerges. There is an enormous yawn and the child is missing a front tooth. He can’t be more than six and Jaskier wants to kill someone for that young life, but he will settle for making sure never again that child is taken for unimportant, never risked into a blizzard, and certainly never feed poison.

“Calixte,” Jaskier says, savouring the name Lambert told him, the only thing the dead boy had told him, and beside them, Aiden swears colourfully, and just have the time to catch the bard as the poor note lose consciousness.


End file.
